Roger Buckley

In a fast-moving and incisive narrative, Roger Buckley examines America's close and continuous relationship with the Asia-Pacific region from the end of the Pacific War to the first days of the Presidency of George W. Bush. The author traces the responses of the United States government to the major crises in the area through the Cold War decades and the initial post-Cold War years. He demonstrates how the US sought to maintain its dominant regional position through a series of security alliances and its own political, military and economic strengths. Professor Buckley examines the subject from geopolitical perspectives to provide a gateway to the understanding of a complex region certain to be of global importance in the twenty-first century.

US-Japan alliance diplomacy 1945-1990 is a pioneering study of a remarkable relationship. Based upon extensive primary sources, it traces how over the past forty-five years the USA has moved from hostility to close friendship with Japan. Boger Buckley is concerned with three principal issues: the degree of continuity in American policies towards Japan, the role of personalities and the beneficiaries of foreign policy. He addresses these questions by highlighting the main features of each phase of the changing relationship. He also stresses both the inequalities of US-Japan ties until the 1970s and the present strains that the two nations face in attempting to come to terms with the twin challenges of shifts in relative economic power and a rapidly evolving international environment. The study concludes with an analysis of the overall character of this extraordinary alliance and demonstrates how strengthening ties are now the key to peace and stability in the entire Asian-Pacific region. In this book, Roger Buckley presents for the first time the historical background to a relationship that attracts widespread interest not only in the USA and Japan, but in the entire Asian-Pacific region and beyond. It will therefore be widely read by students and specialists of Japanese and American history, Asian studies and international relations.

On July 1, 1997, a world will come to an end, as one of the last outposts of the British empire returns to Chinese rule. No one has depicted that world - the dazzlingly modern, obdurately traditional Crown Colony of Hong Kong - more faithfully, shrewdly, or affectionately than Jan Morris, who in this contemporary classic of travel writing celebrates the city's charm and squalor, unravels the tangle of its history, and gives us an informed glimpse into its future. Combining firsthand reportage with exemplary research, Morris takes us from Hong Kong's clamorous back alleys to the luxurious Happy Valley racecourse, where taipans place their bets between sips of champagne and bird's nest soup. Morris chronicles the exploits of opium traders and pirates, colonists and financiers, and shows how their descendants view the prospect of reunification with the Chinese mainland. What emerges is an epic tableau, vastly informed and pungently evocative.